How to Build an Army in Your Basement

From homemade rockets to car bombs, take a look at the weapons that Syria’s rebels are using to defeat Bashar al-Assad.

BY ELIOT HIGGINS | DECEMBER 4, 2012

ONE-OFF DIY WEAPONS

There are also a number of weapons that appear to be one-offs -- for example, the above air-powered Molotov cocktail launcher. Other examples included a prototype of a grenade launcher, a shotgun based pipe-bomb launcher (seen in action here), a DIY recoilless gun, and a multi-caliber pipe gun.

Some of these weapons are extremely unsafe -- for example, take this shoulder-mounted mortar launcher. Toward the end of the video we see several examples of the weapon being fired, and the last of those examples show the mortar becoming stuck in the end of the barrel, causing the rebel to drop the weapon and run away before the detonation.

 

Eliot Higgins writes for the Brown Moses Blog, which covers the military hardware and tactics used in the Arab revolts. Follow him on Twitter: @Brown_Moses.